The Future of Hybrid Meat: Here To Stay or Gone Tomorrow?
Week after week, meat and dairy categories stock store shelves with new hybrid plant-animal protein products.
Half cow milk, half almond milk. Part soy, part chicken. A portion ground lamb, a portion organic chickpea.
Credit: Real Life Farms® website.
“Fads inspire skepticism, fascination then boredom. Trends inspire skepticism, fascination then habit.”
If you’re like me, you can’t help but be stuck in the skepticism stage with this new hybrid category. Will “hybrid animal-plant protein” be a passing fad or could it achieve sustained category growth and get adopted into ritual?
A reliable way to help assess the staying power of this new hybrid animal-plant protein category is to assess its drivers.
Three possible drivers
Some critics say hybrid products derive out of plant-based meat companies’ intense pressure for more options — new product development (NPD) and limited time offer (LTO) pipelines;
Others say it’s out of animal-protein companies’ fear of losing market share to plant-based meat co’s (animal meat buyers switching to plant-based protein);
Or could this hybrid insurgence stem from “flexitarian” values and motives? Aligning this category with consumer wants and needs, giving it serious longevity.
Flexitarian Diet: a semi-vegetarian diet that focuses on healthy plant proteins and other whole, minimally processed plant-based foods with meat and animal products in moderation.
Plant-based meat co’s intense pressure for more offerings
Tom Vierhile, VP Strategic Insights at Innova - North America, believes that a majority of the motivation to market hybrid products comes from the need to ship more product, not necessarily the need to meet consumer needs.
Vierhile does have a point. Naturally, as the meatless sector continues to grow, fully locked and loaded LTOs and NPDs will be expected by consumers and demanded by shareholders.
Janet Forgrieve, food industry expert, explains that the plant-based category is experiencing this right now. “Startups to big food companies are looking to marketing and ad campaigns to ensure their plant-based products stand out from the crowd and have a pipeline of LTOs and NPDs.”
Animal-meat co’s fear of losing market share from plant-based meat co’s
Shares of Beyond Meat skyrocketed more than 500% since its initial public offering, alarming many animal-meat co’s.
And with the recent QSR and retail launch of meatless CPGs — Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat, Lightlife, MorningStar Farms, Nestle, Tyson — plant-based meat alternatives have become exponentially more popular, more buzz-worthy, share-worthy, and all-around influential.
Brisan Group: Consumer Insights Survey - Flexitarian diet, September 2019
Bill Gates puts his money where his mouth is as an investor in Beyond Meat, remarking, “Remaking meat is one sector of the food industry that is ripe for innovation.”
Richard Branson also shares Gate’s vision for a less-meaty future, “I believe that in thirty years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same, and also be much healthier for everyone.”
Aligned with flexitarian motives and values
Flexitarian diet is growing with familiarity and popularity in the US. About one in five Americans identify as a “flexitarian”, with this number increasing by about 1.6% since last year.
This (1.6%) may not seem like a huge increase, but scale takes time.
Information Source: Nielsen, The F Word: Flexitarian Is Not a Curse to the Meat Industry
As convenience and accessibility to delicious, plant-based meat options continue to increase, the number of flexitarians is also anticipated to grow. And as independent Gen Z buying power flourishes in the coming years, it may very well correlate with the growing number of self-proclaimed flexitarians (as Gen Z ethos overlays nicely with flexitarian values).
Flexitarian Values
Health, social consciousness, and environmental issues are core values of flexitarians. This aligns with both Millennials and Gen Z consumers.
Flexitarian Motives
Flexitarian motives are based on a balanced diet of animal and plant protein.
“Hybrid animal-plant products could be seen as the perfect physical manifestation of flexitarian motives and values.”
But without consumer input, lifespan is slim to none
According to Dr. Stella Salisu Hickman, VP Research at Brisan Group, regardless of the category drivers, if hybrid products are not designed with consumer input, odds are sustainable success isn’t in the cards.
Dr. Hickman went on to share historical examples of when companies turn out products with zero consumer insights and fail miserably:
Coke: Launch a “New Coke”;
Pepsi: Launch of “Crystal Pepsi”;
Ben-Gay: Launch of Aspirin that smells like menthol (“ingest” vs “topical”).
“You need to engage with consumers to understand appearance, aroma, flavor, and texture attributes and experiential usage. These insights help to frame a blueprint of consumer wants, needs, and expectations,” Dr. Hickman remarked.
“Regardless of the category drivers, if hybrid products are not designed with consumer input, odds are sustainable success isn’t in the cards.”
Word to the wise
It can be short-sighted to only look at product categories and consumer categories when assessing hybrid market drivers. As CPG innovation guru Clay Christensen explains, segmenting by “jobs-to-be-done” (JTBD) is much more effective.
JTBD Defined: not a product, service, or a specific solution; it's the higher purpose for which customers buy products, services, and solutions.
"Most organizations are already organized around product categories or customer categories," Christensen says, "and therefore people only see opportunities within this little frame that they've stuck you in."
Executing dynamic, experiential consumer engagement in real-time is an excellent way to understand the deep-seeded purpose for why consumer buy hybrid products.
We spoke with consumers, here’s what they had to say about hybrid products
About 79% of consumers have interest in trying plant-based products and even more are intrigued with this new hybrid category (82%).
Interest in consuming
Brisan Group: Consumer Insights Survey - Flexitarian diet, September 2019
What would a hybrid-meat product “look” like according to consumers?
Forty-two percent of consumers say that the meat hybrid product would be a clean 50/50 split of plant-based to meat ingredients, would look just like real meat (72%) and have grill marks (63%).
Brisan Group: Consumer Insights Survey - Flexitarian diet, September 2019
Brisan Group: Consumer Insights Survey - Flexitarian diet, September 2019
If the products are for consumers, make them with consumers
When it comes to the expansion of the hybrid category, all drivers (even competing drivers) help influence growth. But when it comes to the lifespan of this category, products must thoughtfully align with consumer needs, wants, and expectations in order to earn fans and get adopted into ritual.
With so many questions yet to be answered in this new space, it’s certain that the best way for businesses to reduce risk and maximize opportunity with hybrid line extensions is to look to the consumer as a co-creators.
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About the author
Theresa Cantafio is the VP of Marketing and Trend Insights at Brisan Group. With a background in food science, design-thinking, and hands-on culinary, Cantafio has been providing food marketing and trend thought-leadership to the industry for over five years. Her writing has been featured in SmartBrief, Go Clean Label, IFT, and Chicago Woman Magazine. You can find her hosting dinner parties, studying brand art directions, and volunteering as an RMMFI food service business coach.